GT5 Sound Thread

  • Thread starter Marry_Me_GT
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RACECAR
And before someone accuses me of picking on Forza and being a GT fanboy, I don't hate Forza and have no reason to hate a game I've never played, but their sounds aren't as "good" as people seem to make them from all that I'm hearing.
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No matter what you've said, they're still step ahead of GT engine sounds. Not perfect though.
 
RedBaron
No matter what you've said, they're still step ahead of GT engine sounds. Not perfect though.
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Forza's sound are better in one aspect, Gran turismo's in another.

If I had to choose between them I would chose Gran Turismos sound. I can't even stand to watch a replay in Forza because of the poor sound engine:grumpy:
 
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RACECAR
Good grief, that second video is littered with terrible sounds, how can any of you call those "good"? :confused:

Aston Martin One-77 - Horrid. Only has it at idle, but its terrible going through gears at higher RPMS. So synthetic, is that what they think it sounds like?

Aston Martin DBR9 - Again, terrible. Its as if Turn 10 thinks a that synthesized sound automatically equals a V12 when it doesn't.

Lamborghini Mercielago LP670-4 SV - Again, high pitched synths does not equal a V12 and this has to be the worst one by far

Porsche Carrera - Now they can't even tell the difference between a V10 and a V12 because they recycled the same crappy synth

Audi R8 V10 - Has this annoying burble I don't hear on the real one.

And before someone accuses me of picking on Forza and being a GT fanboy, I don't hate Forza and have no reason to hate a game I've never played, but their sounds aren't as "good" as people seem to make them from all that I'm hearing.
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The samples are "OK" ish, but the RPM aliasing caught my ear; you can hear it stepping when revving and changing gears. That's the real "killer" for me. It also reminds me of games from 10 years ago, or an overworked processor whilst gaming (since it gives a similar effect). Update your sound engine's parameters at least as often as the physics engine, it's not difficult...

McLaren
The Murc. SV is actually pretty close to the real car. From what I've heard from the car at LoD, it's gets to a pretty high pitch no matter what RPM the car is revving at.
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That's a dynamic thing, and you (the sound artist) need to be careful about how you sample the recordings in order for the effect not to sound contrived, or canned. Exhausts typically are meant to silence the sound of the engine (on a road car) but it's more and more the case now, with affordable acoustics (software) packages, that manufacturers can tune their exhausts to resonate at a given frequency, almost irrespective of the driving "frequency" (i.e. the sound coming out of the exhaust ports). Listen through a few cars in Kreissieg's catalogue and you'll soon see what I mean. :P

dave_sz
Because a phone that will never be called has no reason to be connected?
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That, and the clip posted sounded terrible anyway - a bit too lo-fi for my tastes :dopey:
 
I just captured a F430 clip in Shift - man the sound engine is worse than I thought!!
Especially on the start line when you blip the throttle you can hear the pitch steps and glitchy sound

Shakes head at people proclaiming Shift as having powerful sounds.....

Not only that but I always get a feeling Shift has a simple switch between on and off throttle, it feels abrupt and unnatural. 25% or under in Shift = off throttle apparently...
 
@ Griffith: Can you explain a little more about the "stepping" in your last post? Thanks.

@ CoolColJ: No arguing that Shift didn't get the sound right. Maybe I've enjoyed the game so much I haven't studied the sounds the way you and Griffith have. You guys seem to be more sensitive to sound issues than my laymen's ears allow me to be. Still, won't you admit it's easier to get excited over the raw (if overdone) sounds in Shift versus GT?
 
Tagger
@ Griffith: Can you explain a little more about the "stepping" in your last post? Thanks.

@ CoolColJ: No arguing that Shift didn't get the sound right. Maybe I've enjoyed the game so much I haven't studied the sounds the way you and Griffith have. You guys seem to be more sensitive to sound issues than my laymen's ears allow me to be. Still, won't you admit it's easier to get excited over the raw (if overdone) sounds in Shift versus GT?
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I will agree that I have spent a lot of time studying sounds, largely as a personal project over the last few years, but I've also been playing games for most of my life (well, cracking on for 80%+ anyway) and most of that time has been spent on racing games.
Basically, I know what I hear, but I know that there's a lot my brain will make me think I can hear, so I try hard to listen through that. But anyway, that's another discussion that I've bored people with in the past :P

As for the stepping, is quite tricky to explain. Basically, it sounds to me like the parameters used to govern the playback of the samples being used as engine sounds is not updating "fast enough". What is fast enough? Well at least 36 Hz (or some higher multiple of it, going by Grand Prix Legends, which still isn't quite fast enough for my ears.)

All that needs to be updated to change the sound is throttle position and rpm - two numbers, per car. Given that physics calculations need tens of numbers, probably more, to describe the status of a car, adding two more at the physics rate is no big deal. Typical physics rates these days are in excess of 100 Hz, which ought to be fine for my ears - 0.01 seconds is a normal figure for the "discrete sound" threshold our brains have - any two sounds with a gap of less than this threshold sounds like one complete sound to us, in other words.
I just tested myself to verify this, and it's important to note that it depends highly on the manner / nature of the sound and the listening environment: using headphones and a synthetic AK47 sound (without reverb), I could discern two separate "bangs" down to 6 milliseconds, or 167 Hz. I "knew" that the sound I was hearing was two separate events, so even though it began overlapping at around 11 milliseconds (91 Hz), I could still "tell" they were separate - if I'd done it blind, or with a strong reverb, it may have been a different story - i.e. a lower (Hz) "score".

------------------

Anyway, the graph in the "Modulation" section of this article shows what I mean by stepping; it's shown below for clarity. The governing data (i.e. rpm, throttle position) are sampled / interpolated at a given rate and this gives the "stepped" approximation (in black) of the "real" status (red line) of the data (really only as fine / accurate as the time-step of the game engine itself, in this case). If this update rate is less than a given value (e.g. 100 Hz, as above) then the stepping may be audible, as indeed it is in many, many racing games - particularly when the signal changes quickly: revving, gear changes (1st-2nd particularly) and doppler shift as the cars pass close to the camera, maximising the error over time (the space between the red and black lines).

250px-Pcm.svg.png


It's important to remember that the above does not represent the actual sound / it's waveform, rather the control signals only; but the sound is dependent on the control signals, so any sudden steps in the control will give a corresponding step in the resultant sound, according to the severity of the control step and the character of the sound it governs.
When you also realise that audio is typically processed at around 44 kHz, you can see why anything less than 100 Hz just seems, well, stupid, because the audio engine has thrown out at least 441 samples before the rpm or throttle position has been "updated".

If you need me to, I can throw together a demo of how sampling rate of "control data" affects the sound of some poorly synthesised engine "noises" :dopey:
(Sorry for the large post!)
 
In the second paragraph of your response you referred to stepping as the sound engine "not updating" fast enough to keep up with throttle input. I've never stopped to consider it. But, I get it after reading your explanation.

After that point however, my eyes sort of glaze over. No worries though, one of my college housemates was a math major I had the same reaction back then in our conversations when he got himself excited over differential equations.

Seriously though, I get the gist of your point. And, the graph helps illustrate the lag in the sound update versus inputs. It makes sense in spite of the concept being new to my ears so to speak. Thanks Griff!

Only problem now is the next time I play Shift and my ears perceive ugly sound, I'll have you to thank/blame for that:sly:.
 
In this video from 4'22" to 4'23" (raise the volume !!!) we can hear the idle sound and it seems quite good even if i'm no nascar specialist (unfortunatly those vids from EPSILON don't have enough bass...)

 
I made a Shift Sound Impression vid of the F430, NSX and Stingray. You can hear the glitchy steps I speak of.
The NSX is one of the better sounds though. Hope it works now, was getting an error
[YOUTUBEHD]pE2JwIu88M0[/YOUTUBEHD]

Shows you how many variations of a tone you can get with an NSX


The Skyline coupe in GT5:P sounds closer to the NSX sound, than the NSX did :)

 
Dahlsim
In this video from 4'22" to 4'23" (raise the volume !!!) we can hear the idle sound and it seems quite good even if i'm no nascar specialist (unfortunatly those vids from EPSILON don't have enough bass...)

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The thing that caught my ears was how great the sound reverborated within the city confines. To my ears, it definitely sounds like the car sounds are echoing off of the surroundings nicely, and the cars themselves sound great...almost too good (like the sound is better than the quality of gameplay, which would be a GT first :dopey: )

EDIT: The in-car audio is a bit weird, like a winding noise creating a weird high-pitched sound. The replay sounds are awesome, and the chase cam audio is good too, but the in-car and roof cam sound funny to this long-time NASCAR fan's ears.
 
The reverb is from the room the TV is in. The high pitched sound is the straight cut gearbox transmission whine.
 
Some builds have the transmission whine, the E3 build above, some don't, the Gamescom build. The camera mic and TV speaker is killing all the bass, hence why the whine is louder

 
One issue I instantly have with the sound in the Epsilon NASCAR vid is the level of the tyre screech. I'm not saying tyres wouldn't screech. I'm saying it wouldn't be cutting straight over the top of the epic noise those engines make.
 
That's the, already many time mentioned, Motul GT-R, we'll have to see about others...
On a different note, there's birds chirping in the background in some of those replay shots:lol:, or are those real birds somewhere behind the camera?:confused:
 
Slurm
One issue I instantly have with the sound in the Epsilon NASCAR vid is the level of the tyre screech. I'm not saying tyres wouldn't screech. I'm saying it wouldn't be cutting straight over the top of the epic noise those engines make.
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Agreed! Tire screech is overdone there. I've been to 4 NASCAR races and for my trip to Daytona for a July night race I was sitting under the flag stand. When the winner performed a burnout for the crowd, all you could hear was that awesome motor. I could see the tires spinning but there was no doubt all the sound I could hear was the motor.
 
There's a bit too much lack of exhaust noise in the cockpit view.
Also gearbox whine is way too strong compared to the engine, which should be very loud.
But that is supposed to by an older build after all.
 
SHIRAKAWA Akira
There's a bit too much lack of exhaust noise in the cockpit view.
Also gearbox whine is way too strong compared to the engine, which should be very loud.
But that is supposed to by an older build after all.
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TV speaker to cheap small mic, what do you expect? Telephone sound

It also depends, I've heard some extremely loud gearbox whine in some GT and Rally cars.
Some that have been posted in this thread before
 
CoolColJ
TV speaker to cheap small mic, what do you expect? Telephone sound
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Exhaust noise comes up with rage when the external view is selected in the video. Gear whine also mostly disappears. It's not a recording issue.

It also depends, I've heard some extremely loud gearbox whine in some GT and Rally cars.
Some that have been posted in this thread before
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Not from NASCAR cars however, from many videos I've seen.
OK, you might argue that microphones aren't the same thing as human ears, but sound balance between different car components (engine, exhaust, gearbox) with the internal view in this case is clearly off.
 
Enough with the Motul Autech GT-R already!
It's the same sound we heard back to early 2009, and it hasn't changed since then. In other words it's extremely old

from Nagoya exhibition in March this year
 
I've seen repeated in this thread that GT5 has very accurate audio positioning with the implication, if not outright claiming, of Forza 3 just having slapped on audio that doesn't emanate from the proper areas of the vehicle.

So I've thrown together a quick clip of my Cobra R blasting down the benchmark drag strip as seen via a side view camera so you can adjust your volume balance slider to see for yourself that the supercharger whine is coming from the engine bay, and the exhaust note is coming from the pipes. The vehicle sounds are also properly positioned and muffled when you are viewing the game from the interior as well, I can make a video showing this too if anyone wants proof.


I hope my first ever post here on GTPlanet being about Forza Motorsport doesn't get me in trouble, I love all racing games!
 
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